Privacy Policy
At Focus Better, we build tools designed to enhance deep focus, consistent daily habits, and structured project execution. Protecting your personal data and maintaining transparent data practices is central to our mission.
We never sell, rent, or trade your personal information, focus sessions, or project data to data brokers or ad networks.
Your focus logs, habit streaks, task descriptions, and Google or Microsoft data are never used to train public or foundation AI models.
Production connections use HTTPS, and connected-account credentials are encrypted on the server. No system can guarantee absolute security.
Export your account data or request account deletion through Settings. Retention and deletion details are explained below.
1. Introduction & Overview
This Privacy Policy explains how Focus Better (“we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, stores, and protects information gathered through our platform, including our web applications at focusbetter.io, and our APIs.
By accessing or using Focus Better, you consent to the data collection and usage practices described in this policy. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please discontinue use of the platform.
2. Information We Collect
We process the following categories of information:
- Information You Provide Directly: Name, email address, password hash, personal profile details, project labels, custom soundscape preferences, and your configured focus timer durations.
- Focus, Habit & Project Activity Data: Focus session durations, start/end timestamps, completion states, interruption notes, habit streaks, project milestones, checklist progress, and productivity statistics.
- Log & System Diagnostics: IP addresses, browser user agents, request metadata, and security audit records used for rate-limiting, troubleshooting, and abuse prevention. Operational logs and database audit records have separate retention settings; IP addresses are not necessarily anonymized.
- Device Tokens for Notifications: Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) registration tokens if you opt in to receive push notifications on your browser or device.
3. Connected Accounts & Provider Data
You can optionally use Google or Microsoft login, Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar, Gmail or Outlook Mail, and Google Tasks. Login, calendar, mail, and task connections are authorized separately. Connections belong to your individual Focus Better account, including Microsoft work or school connections; connecting a provider does not share your mailbox with other Focus Better users.
gmail.send, contacts.readonly, contacts.other.readonly, openid, email), lets our servers send new emails you write, including scheduled ones, and suggest recipients from your Google contacts and other contacts as you type; contacts are not stored. The second, browser-only (gmail.modify and gmail.settings.basic), is requested only in your browser, after Google's review, and is held in memory for at most an hour. Your browser uses it to call Gmail directly to read and search mail, archive, mark read or unread, report spam, move to Trash and back, save drafts, send replies and forwards, show your Gmail signature, and create or remove a Gmail filter when you block or unblock a sender. Gmail messages, lists, labels, signatures, filters, and attachments go only between your browser and Google. They are never transmitted to or stored on Focus Better servers, and no one at Focus Better can read them. Our servers hold only the send-and-contacts permission, emails you write for scheduling (encrypted, and erased once sent or cancelled), opaque conversation identifiers for snoozes and task links, and your Focus Better signature, which is used for scheduled Gmail emails. When you create a task from a Gmail email, the task keeps only the text you type and an opaque link to the conversation; it does not store the email's subject, sender, or date. For Outlook, we access message identifiers, senders, recipients, subjects, timestamps, snippets, message content, folders, and attachments to show your inbox, search, and read messages, and to carry out the actions you choose: marking mail read or unread, archiving, snoozing, moving it to Trash or Spam and back, blocking a sender, saving drafts, and sending, scheduling, replying to, or forwarding email. We look up the people you correspond with in Outlook only to suggest recipients; they are not stored. When you create a task from an Outlook email, the task keeps that email's subject, sender, and date, and the text and attachments you choose to copy into it; people who can see the task can see them. We never permanently delete mail. No human reads your Gmail data, and it is never used for advertising, sold, or used to train AI models.- Login Data: Provider login supplies identity information such as a stable account identifier, name, and email address. We do not receive your Google or Microsoft password.
- Connection Storage: We store encrypted authorization credentials and token caches, provider account identifiers, granted permissions, calendar configuration, task list settings, event and task mappings, synchronization cursors, subscription metadata, and conflict records needed to operate the connection. Calendar synchronization may retain event details and change snapshots needed to reconcile mapped schedules.
- Mail Content: Outlook messages, mail lists, and attachments are fetched to serve your requests, not archived in our database or application logs. Gmail mail never reaches our servers at all. To open your inbox instantly, your browser keeps the first page of your mail list (senders, subjects, snippets and dates, never message bodies) on your device for up to seven days; it is erased when you sign out, when someone else signs in on that browser, and when you disconnect a mailbox. Our servers never keep it. A file you attach to an Outlook email is held in private storage only until it is added to your draft, and erased within an hour if it never is. A Gmail email you write and schedule is kept encrypted on our servers until it is sent or cancelled, then erased; the files attached to it are kept in private storage for the same time and erased with it, and a file uploaded for a Gmail email that is never scheduled is erased within an hour. We keep records of scheduled sends so a send is made at the time you chose and never goes out twice. To return a snoozed conversation on time we keep its identifier and return time. Snoozed Gmail conversations come back when Focus Better is open at or after the chosen time. For Outlook, to keep blocked senders in Spam we keep the addresses you block, and we keep the Outlook signature you write. A Gmail block is a Gmail filter in your own mailbox that labels their future mail “Blocked” and skips the Inbox; Outlook blocks apply to Outlook only. Disconnecting a mailbox removes its snoozes and signature; Outlook blocked addresses stay until you unblock them or delete your account. HTML is sanitized and displayed in a sandbox. Remote images stay hidden until you choose to show them. In Gmail they then load directly from the sender, who can see that the email was opened. In Outlook they load through our image proxy, so the sender sees our server rather than your IP address; known one-pixel trackers are removed, and Spam never loads images or links. Inline images may be fetched from the mail provider to render the message. Opening a link takes you to an external site governed by its own policies.
- Permissions & Control: Manage each connection from the account menu → Integrations. Disconnecting one capability removes its local authorization credentials without signing you out or disconnecting another capability. Separately, you can revoke provider consent in your Google or Microsoft account; that may affect other capabilities using the same provider application. Focus Better never calls Google's revoke endpoint, because it would remove every permission granted to the project, including Calendar, Tasks, and sign-in. To remove Google access entirely, use your Google Account's third-party connections page.
- Calendar Disconnect: External events are preserved by default. If offered and selected, cleanup attempts to remove only future app-created events and reports failures. Disconnecting does not erase your underlying Focus Better tasks, habits, or historical activity, or delete your provider account.
Google API Limited Use Statement
“Focus Better's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.”
In accordance with the Google API Services User Data Policy, we explicitly guarantee:
- No AI Model Training: Google user data is NEVER used to train, develop, or improve generalized or non-personalized artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) models.
- No Advertising or Data Brokers: We do NOT sell, rent, or transfer Google user data to data brokers, ad networks, or third-party marketing services.
- Strict Human Access Restrictions: Human employees or contractors do NOT read your Google user data unless you have given explicit affirmative permission to inspect an issue (e.g., technical support), it is necessary for security investigations, or as required by law.
- Revocation at Any Time: You can disconnect individual Google integrations through the account menu → Integrations. To revoke Google's grant of access, use your Google Account third-party connections controls.
4. How We Use Information
We use collected information solely for the following legitimate business and service purposes:
- Providing, maintaining, and synchronizing your focus sessions, habit streaks, and project milestone boards across your devices.
- Calculating progression, momentum execution scores, and productivity metrics in accordance with platform rules.
- Retrying supported focus and habit actions from your browser's localStorage queue when connectivity returns.
- Sending essential transactional messages (e.g., password reset links, security notices, and optional habit check-in reminders).
- Detecting, investigating, and preventing fraudulent activities, unauthorized access, and malicious automated attacks.
5. Data Storage, Security & Offline Capabilities
Security is deeply engineered into Focus Better:
- Encryption in Transit: Public production web and API endpoints use HTTPS to protect data in transit.
- Encryption at Rest: Production database and object storage are configured for encryption at rest. Provider credentials receive additional application-level encryption before server-side storage.
- Local Offline Engine: Supported focus and habit writes are queued in your browser's localStorage and retried when connectivity returns. Calendar and mail integrations require an online connection; not every action is available offline.
- Data Center Location: Our primary production databases and servers are hosted within AWS US-East-1 (Northern Virginia, USA).
6. Information Sharing & Service Providers
We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. We use the following services to operate the platform. Connected providers receive authorization requests and data necessary for the features you enable, including scheduled-event content when you choose an external calendar destination. Their own policies also govern their services:
| Service provider | Purpose | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services (AWS) | EC2 compute, RDS PostgreSQL database, S3 encrypted media storage | United States |
| Vercel Inc. | Edge web application hosting and global CDN delivery | Global / United States |
| Resend | Transactional email delivery (account verifications & password resets) | United States |
| Optional Google login, Google Calendar synchronization, Gmail sending and browser-to-Google mail access, contact suggestions, Google Tasks synchronization, and Firebase push notification delivery | Varies by service and account | |
| Microsoft | Optional Microsoft login, Outlook Calendar synchronization, Outlook Mail access, and contact suggestions | Varies by service and account |
7. Data Retention & Account Deletion
We retain your account data for as long as your account remains active. You maintain total control over your data:
- Exporting Data: You can export your focus sessions, tasks, and habit histories at any time from your account settings.
- Account Deletion: You may delete your account directly inside the app under Account Settings or by reaching our support team via Contact Support. Deleting signs you out everywhere and keeps your account for 30 days, during which signing in again restores it. After 30 days, your account and its associated records, including uploaded files, are permanently erased.
- Deletion & Retained Copies: Account deletion removes your account and associated records through our deletion process. Backup copies and operational or security records may remain subject to their retention settings and applicable legal requirements; deletion is not a guarantee of immediate erasure from every system. Contact us for questions about a specific data category. Data held independently by Google or Microsoft is subject to their retention policies.
8. Your Legal Privacy Rights
Depending on your location, you hold statutory rights under regulations such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the UK Data Protection Act, and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA):
- Right of Access & Portability: You may request a copy of the personal information we maintain about you.
- Right of Rectification: You may correct inaccurate or incomplete account data directly through the platform.
- Right of Erasure (“Right to be Forgotten”): You may request complete erasure of your personal data.
- Right to Restrict or Object to Processing: You may object to or request restrictions on how we process certain categories of information.
- California Privacy Rights: Under the CCPA/CPRA, we confirm that we do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. You will never face discrimination for exercising your statutory privacy rights.
To exercise any of these rights, please submit a request via Contact Support. We respond to verified requests within 30 days.
10. Children's Privacy
Focus Better is not designed for or directed to individuals under the age of 13 (or under 16 within the European Economic Area). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information without parental consent, please contact us immediately via Contact Support, and we will promptly delete the data.
11. Contact & Inquiries
For inquiries, privacy questions, data requests, or compliance notices, please contact us directly:
Focus Better
Website: https://focusbetter.io
Privacy & Support: support@focusbetter.io (Contact Support)